


Through the Open Door

by dandelionlily



Category: Batman Begins (2005), Superman Returns (2006)
Genre: Halloween, Harm to Children, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-04 11:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlily/pseuds/dandelionlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the Queen of Stories' Halloween attack, Superman once again falls prey to magic. This time, Batman isn't there to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Music of the Spheres](https://archiveofourown.org/works/202723) by [Mithen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen). 



It wasn’t easy to convince Bruce to stay home for the night. Second-degree burns, a voice naturally raspy from smoke inhalation and a broken arm weren’t reason enough, but even Bruce had to admit that he had no leads on the missing persons cases, and Superman could do a better job sweeping the city. So while Bruce Wayne recovered from a “skiing accident in the Alps” and Batman recovered from a night rescuing people from a one of the largest tenement fires in the city’s history, Superman patrolled Gotham.

It was three weeks after the Halloween night when the Queen of Stories had snatched Kal away into a romance and Bruce had nearly gotten himself killed rescuing his lover, but orange and black streamers still decorated most of the street lamps. Gotham embraced Halloween as it did no other holiday, allowing it to linger around the gothic architecture and wrought-iron fences until December. The Jack-o-Lanterns displayed on every fire escape were sagging in on themselves, their snaggletoothed smiles rotted into sneers.

Superman did his best to watch over his lover’s city, flying through fog-strewn allies and using his infrared vision to penetrate the gloom. It was harder than it should have been: flying in Gotham gave him vertigo, and his vision would slide uncontrolled from infrared to x-ray and back again. It was barely the witching hour, and already the man of steel had dented a car and broken a mugger’s arm through sheer clumsiness; he hadn’t had so much trouble controlling his strength since he was a teenager. It was as if, although Superman had worked out his differences with her guardian, Gotham herself still resented him.  What was even odder was that Gotham welcomed Clark; when not in costume, the manor was more of a home to the Kryptonian than was his Metropolis apartment.

The sounds filtering through Bruce’s communicator was what made it bearable. He listened to his lover grumbling that he was fine, just fine and didn’t need anything. Bruce refused cough drops, soothing teas, painkillers and Alfred’s signature caramel-apple crisp. Of course, minutes after Alfred’s footsteps faded away Clark could hear his lover slurping the tea and eating the apple crisp with little noises of pleasure. Superman did his best not to snicker.

Flying back from the docks, he stopped in midair when he felt a tingling along his nerves like static electricity. He tapped his communicator to make sure Bruce was listening. “B?” He waited for the other man’s impatient grunt before continuing, “I just felt something... odd. I think it might be magic again.”

Bruce inhaled sharply. “Do you know where it’s coming from?”

“I’m not sure but it seems...” Clark trailed off as he rose higher to get a better viewpoint. There seemed to be something happening in one of the nearby parks; a mysterious, steady glow illuminated a circle of robed figures. “It’s in St. Matthew’s Park, near the statue. I’m going to check it out.”

“Be damn careful,” Bruce snapped. “Tell me before you do anything.” Superman knew it was killing his lover to be unable to protect the Man of Steel from one of the few things that could harm him.

The figure robed in scarlet stepped forward and rapped its staff on the ground three times; on the third strike, there was a high-pitched tearing noise and a portal opened. It was like a seven-foot tall tear in reality, its surface rippling like water in a light wind. The one with the staff ordered, “Prepare him,” and two of the others came forward, carrying a bundle between them.

“Oh god,” he whispered.

“Clark? Clark!”

“They have a child. He’s bound and covered with blood.” The five-year-old’s hair, face and clothing were crusted with dried blood, black in the moonlight.

For one moment Clark could hear only grinding teeth, then the curt order, “Go.” He didn’t hesitate a moment longer, shooting down to land between the boy and the portal, then crumpling as agony slammed through his body. Every breath ached in his chest and he flinched from the fireworks going off behind his eyelids. The magicians’ apparent leader, the one in the red cloak, was shouting orders and waving his staff. Superman lunged for him before he could launch an even more debilitating attack; they went down in a heap wrestling for the staff. Even disoriented and in pain, Clark easily overpowered him and slammed the staff into the man’s chin. The hood fell back to reveal the severe face of an elderly woman with steel-gray hair and a rapidly purpling jaw.

“Samantha, how the bloody hell did he find us?” the old woman gasped, releasing the staff and attempting to crab walk backward.

“I don’t know!” one of the other magicians cried, panic in her voice. “The barrier’s still in place. It shouldn’t have-- Magda, the portal!”

“I would appreciate a freeze spell, Lee,” the leader continued, scrambling to her feet. As she leaned forward a heavy jeweled amulet swung free of her robes. Superman might be inexperienced with magic, but even he could recognize that it was an object of power. He grabbed it; the woman cursed and rained ineffective blows on his head and shoulders. “You bloody great idiot! Let go of that; you don’t know what you’re doing.”

She was wrong; Superman knew exactly what he was doing. He crushed the artifact, wincing at the flash and crackle it made as it shattered. The old woman collapsed and flopped about like a fish out of water, harmless without her magic amulet. He turned back to the boy, who was being staked out on the manicured lawn, and made his way over there, his movements painfully slow and confused. One of the magicians who had been kneeling beside the child, securing its ropes, seized Superman’s arm and spoke two words that sounded like a cracking glacier. A cold so intense it burned raced through the hero, followed by a wave of numbness that robbed him of movement. He crashed to the ground and lay beside the blood-covered child, struggling just to breathe.

“Tabatha, give me your amulet,” the old woman demanded. “Stop staring and hand me my staff, Jose, unless you want to see what else comes through unguarded portals.”

“What about Superman?”

“Leave him; if we lose control of the demon now, it’ll kill all of us.” The last thing Clark could make out before he dropped away into the fog was her cold voice saying, “If he’s still alive by the end, I’ll personally take care of him.”

 

* * *

 

“Clark? Clark!” Bruce shouted into the transmitter while pulling on pieces of his armor, but all he could hear was static. Ridiculous. The communicator was satellite-based, powerful enough for perfect transmissions from China or the Mariana Trench; what could have blocked the signal within Gotham?

Magic, apparently. It seemed somehow unfair that an alien and a man of science had to deal with sorcery, of all things, Bruce mused as he scrambled into the tumbler, trying to keep himself distracted from the continued static on the communicator. Despite the evidence to the contrary, even the evidence that had been carved into his chest, in his heart of hearts Bruce still didn’t believe in magic. He cursed viciously when he had to reach across with his left hand to reach the tumbler’s gearshift; as if a broken arm wasn’t bad enough, he’d torn enough muscles in his right shoulder that there was no point in taking it out of its sling. As he raced through Gotham to St. Matthew’s Park, he made a mental note to tweak the design of the next tumbler to accommodate injuries; as it was, he could barely exceed eighty miles per hour on the city streets and still maintain control while shifting. The hour’s drive across Gotham took nearly twenty-eight minutes instead of the usual thirteen. He leapt from the tumbler almost before it had stopped and raced to the angel statue, its arms spread in blessing.

There was no one there. No circle of sorcerers, no blood-covered boy. No Clark. Bruce clinically noted his elevated heart rate and trouble breathing. Shock or panic, and he had time for neither. Biofeedback would ensure that he didn’t deprive his brain of the oxygen it needed to think beyond gone gone gone gone.

The detective knelt in the dew-damp grass with his Maglite between his teeth, reading the story laid out in the bent blades of grass. Here’s where the circle had stood. One had worn hiking boots, and another wore sensible flats, but the majority wore... sneakers? Nikes, Sketchers, Adidas, another pair of Nikes, and Reeboks. Not what he had expected from a group of sorcerers. Here was the rounded imprint of some sort of walking stick. Two uneven boot prints where Clark had landed, heavily and off balance. Signs of a scuffle, of Superman on his knees. Fragments of a stone: red jasper. Four stake holes and flakes of dried blood marked where the boy had been tied in place; there were enough rope fibers to suggest the bonds had been cut rather than untied, but nothing to indicate if the child was alive or dead. Nothing to indicate if Clark-- no. Batman collected a few of the blood flakes and examined the scorch mark but was unable to make anything of it, apart from the fact that it wasn’t caused by Superman’s heat vision.Rising from his crouch, Bruce heard his knee creak and suddenly felt very, very old. There were no familiar booted footprints leading away, but there was the indication of something heavy being half-carried, half-dragged to the curb. There were tire marks where the cars had taken off in a hurry. Ford hatchback and a Chevy sedan, judging by the tire spacing and acceleration profile, but no paint flakes or custom tires. That was the end of the trail.

The tumbler pulled into the cave just as dawn was breaking. Alfred was waiting calmly with a pot of coffee and a disapproving expression on his face. “Master Bruce,” he began severely, “I thought we had agreed to leave patrol to Superman, at least until that terrible cough of yours-- Good lord. What has happened?”

“Clark’s gone.”

That gave even Alfred pause. “How?”

“Magic.” Alfred waited for him to continue, then turned to go. As he turned, Bruce said in a rush, “It’s my fault, I told him to save the child.”

“I very much doubt you could have stopped him, Master Bruce. Not if a child’s life was at stake.”

It was true, of course. But that didn’t change the fact that the only voice in Bruce’s ear was static.


	2. Chapter 2

Even with all his studies of the criminal mind, the banality of evil still shocked Bruce sometimes. He was wandering the campus of Gotham U, anonymous in a cheap skiing jacket with a scarf wrapped around his neck and the lower half of his face. The temperature had plunged the last few days; it was nearing dusk, and the thermometer read a couple of degrees below zero. The suit he was wearing under the jacket and jeans had some extra padding that should prevent his shoulder from popping out of its socket, and he’d widened the sleeve to accommodate his cast.

It had taken Batman sixty-three hours of research to locate the coven that had most likely been in the park the night Superman disappeared. Even his experimental supercomputer hadn’t been able to narrow down suspects based on the few clues as he'd been able to collect from the crime scene, and there were no traffic cameras or even street-facing security cameras in the area. Instead he’d followed the supply trail. Bruce had done some cursory research on magic in the week following the Faerie Queen’s attack; all he’d had to do was modify the program he used to track methamphetamine ingredients to track magical supplies such as henbane and focus crystals instead. The real challenge had been collecting customer data: three-fifths of the magic shops in Gotham didn’t keep their sales records on an internet-enabled computer. Batman had been forced to make after hours visits to those seventeen stores to steal paper ledgers and credit card receipts. Bruce blessed the fact that apparently evil, child-sacrificing covens used plastic. After manual data entry and hours of staring dully at blank screen while the data collated, the computer had chimed and outputted a list of two hundred eighty-eight suspects who had purchased large volumes of some supposedly powerful herbs or charms. Eliminating professional chefs and food suppliers brought the list to a more manageable ninety-two. Out of those, twenty-one had purchased Red Jasper. Cross referencing against the DMV left him with a single suspect who drove a Chevy sedan or Ford hatchback: Magda Roberts, Professor of Comparative Religion at Gotham University.

A little bit of digging had revealed that Professor Roberts, who had transferred to Gotham from the University of Arizona five years earlier, had been funded exceptionally well through University support, grants and sizable personal contributions. All this despite the fact that she and her eight graduate students had only produced four papers during that time. It didn’t take much of an analytical mind to detect that something was rotten at Gotham U.

Bruce had taken the precaution of checking Magda’s Chevy in faculty parking and had found a few dark hairs, but nothing conclusive: no blood or rope fibers. Which left the direct approach: it was convenient that the good professor had decided to work late that evening. Bruce shed his outer layers and locked his cowl in place in a shadowed alcove between two sociology buildings, and Batman scrambled the key card scanner long enough to enter Keller Hall. His research had turned up a two-hundred square foot discrepancy between the university maps of the basement level and the original building plans; Batman headed straight to an apparent broom closet, bumped the lock and entered the hidden lab.

Superman was laid out unconscious on one of the tables, and Professor Roberts--a petite, gray-haired woman with a greenish bruise on her jaw--was pouring a gelatinous orange substance into his mouth.

“That was fast. Were you able to find the powdered black haw?” she asked, then looked up and straight into Batman’s eyes. “Oh hell. Not again.” She grabbed some tangled thread from the table.

Batman launched himself into the room, his only aim to reach and protect Superman. He’d deal with the sorcerers afterwards. Roberts whispered something over the thread while her fingers worked in cat’s-cradle motions, and Batman lost all sense of balance. He crashed to the ground, trying unsuccessfully to brush away the spider-silk restraints binding his senses. 

“Goddamn it, Samantha," the witch bellowed, "I told you to renew the barriers on this place!”

One of the doors down the hall banged open and someone else entered the room, doubtless twenty-six year old Ph.D. student Samantha Gray. “I did it two days ago, Prof.”

“Care to explain how the hell a mundane got in, then?”

“Oh my God, it’s Batman! He’s really real!” Batman could hear someone approach in chunky-heeled shoes, sense someone lean over him, and tried to kick her. He didn’t connect with anything, but the young woman gave a little shriek.

“A bit of focus, my dear?” Magda growled. “That spell won’t last long; we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t get to Superman.”

“Lee’s in the office; he could use his freeze spell . . .”

“By all means, if you want to dispose of yet another body; as far as I can tell, Batman’s human. Just put up another barrier, and please try to get it right this time.”

Batman stopped flailing and carefully picked off each thread, one by one, until he could see clearly. Samantha was an odd combination of professional and party-girl: she wore a conservative blouse, a long white lab coat, safety glasses pushed up on the top of her head, a black leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings. A blue ball of energy kindled within her cupped hands. It expanded suddenly, brushing through him like a cold gust of wind.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Magda observed wryly.

“He’s not a mundane,” Samantha insisted, angry and a little scared.

“We know all the sensitives in Gotham, and Jack would have felt any new ones entering.”

“Jack’s a druggie,” the younger woman pointed out.

“And the best damn clairvoyant in the state. Go on, then; we’ll need Jose to teleport Superman to a secure location until we can deal with this interruption.”

“Fine, but he’s not a mundane. I mean, he’s just passing through everything I throw at him. Just like Superman did.” Samantha left in a huff, slamming the door behind her.

“Just like Superman, hmm?” Magda examined Batman for a moment, then started shuffling around some of the hundreds of jars on the metal shelving lining the room. While her back was turned, he carefully picked away the last threads and rose to a crouch. The older woman turned back with an open jar in one hand, some sort of dark dust in the other. Batman rushed her; she panicked and threw the dust at his face. Trained reflexes took over: he shut his eyes against the dust, held his breath, and threw her across the floor. The glass jar shattered somewhere.

Batman lifted the breathless woman from the floor by the front of her blouse and slammed her into some of the metal shelving. “Attack me again, and I’ll make sure you won’t be able to.”

“You’re fey-touched,” she blurted, “otherwise your aura wouldn’t have reacted to the iron filings.” Her wide gray eyes narrowed in calculation. “But if that’s the case...”

“Get the hell away from the prof,” a man from the door growled in a slightly hispanic accent. It was Jose Príncipe, second-year masters student and black belt in judo. Batman angled himself so he could watch the young man and Roberts both.

Roberts snapped, “Wait, everyone wait. Samantha, you did the research into the All Hallows' Eve portals. Where did they open to?”

Samantha poked her head around Jose, her face creased in puzzlement. “The faerie realm.”

“Which one?”

“The Queen of Stories’ kingdom. You know, the source of the Tam Lin story.”

Magda grinned suddenly, her face seeming years younger, and relaxed in Batman’s grip. “You sneaky, sneaky boys. You have the whole world fooled, don’t you?”

“Do you need help?” Jose asked her, almost as confused as Batman.

“No, and Superman doesn’t need our protection either. I somehow doubt Batman will hurt his lady love.”

“You didn’t come here to hurt Superman?” Jose checked; the tension was leeching out of his posture.

Batman’s jaw worked silently as he lowered Magda to the ground. Of all the possible drawbacks of seeming to be enemies in public, he had never considered that anyone would try to protect Superman from him. Particularly the group that had attacked the Man of Steel in the first place.

“No, he came to rescue his true love from the clutches of evil sorcerers.” At Jose’s obvious confusion, she elaborated: “They’re both fey-touched. Recently. And the only faerie portal to open anywhere on Earth in the past year leads straight into a love story. Believe me, they are destined for each other or some such faerie crap.” Magda tried to straighten out the creases in her blouse and addressed Batman. “I hope you know how to help him better than we do. Three nights ago he passed through the protective barrier and absorbed a dangerous amount of magical radiation from one of the Hell dimensions while we were trying to banish a Chk’lr demon.”

“You what?”

Magda seemed to take this as a challenge to her group’s skill. “It’s never happened before. Sensitives generally know to stay the hell away from an open portal unless they’re wearing red jasper for protection, and we were well-shielded against mundanes. But apparently not the fey-touched.”

“No, back up, you were trying to banish a demon? Clark said you had a bound, bleeding child.”

Samantha piped up, “The Chk’lr had possessed Timothy, the poor boy. So of course we had to tie him up. As for the blood--that was the Chk’lr’s last meal.” She made a face. “They eat humans when the have the chance, and they’re not the neatest eaters. I threw up when we were cleaning up the first victim.”

“The missing persons. You’ve been hiding what’s happened to them.”

“Well duh.” Samantha twirled a bright-green strand of hair around one finger. “We didn’t want the police--or you--sticking your noses in and asking stupid questions and arresting us before we could get rid of the demon.”

“Their families will never learn what happened to their loved ones,” Batman growled.

Magda suggested dryly, “You could always tell the family their loved one got eaten by a five-year-old possessed by a demon. I’m sure that will bring them great comfort.” She returned Batman’s glare. “Focusing on immediate concerns, do you know how to get your boyfriend back on his feet? We tried healing potions, but he had some sort of allergic reaction to most of them.”

“What’s that?” Batman asked, pointing at the gelatinous substance she had been pouring down his throat.

“Orange jello,” she answered. “Hey, we didn’t know what super-powered aliens ate.”

Batman ground his teeth and gestured around the windowless room. “Did you ever try exposing him to direct sunlight?”

The sorcerers blinked at him. Jose asked, “What, he’s solar powered?”

“I suppose we could have laid him out in the middle of the quad,” Samantha suggested, eyes bright with mischief. “We could have told everyone he was a frat boy sleeping off a rowdy costume party.”

Magda made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go on then, take care of your one true love. Get him home and give him a sun bath. And next time you run into a magical portal,” she made a business card appear in her hand like magic, “call the experts.”

Batman growled, ignored the card and, despite his shoulder, managed to hoist Superman into a fireman’s carry. His anger at the wasted time and worry was mitigated by the warmth of the man of steel’s torso pressing against his back. Once he left the building the static faded from his communicator and he could hear as well as feel Superman’s deep, even breathing. The tumbler’s autopilot drove the tank to meet him. He buckled Superman in; the man looked ridiculously large and colorful in the black interior. Before starting for home and the cave’s sun bed, Batman reached over to touch his lover’s cheek.

“You idiot,” he growled to his unconscious companion, “don’t you know I’m the only one who’s supposed to get hurt?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magda King is an original character I have written about in a National Novel Writing Month story that I'm still trying to wrestle into shape.


End file.
